The second band I ever saw was King Crimson. It was a free concert in Hyde Park in 1971. I was about 12 or 13. I always remember King Crimson because I’d just discovered In The Court Of The Crimson King. That’s where things went a bit further because I liked Greg Lake’s singing, and so my first indoor concert was ELP at the Empire Pool, Wembley.
Fast-forward 45 years: Keith Emerson lived in my neighbourhood in LA. It would’ve blown my teenage mind to think that I would be going to have Sunday lunch regularly with my old hero. Deep Purple’s Glenn Hughes had introduced us. I told him about seeing ELP at Wembley and he told me that his son’s favourite band was The Cure. And I’m like, ‘Wow! Full circle!’
I used to go to the Croydon Greyhound regularly because it was easy to get the train from Crawley and be there in about 30 minutes. Every Sunday we’d go and see whoever was playing. I must have seen Stray about 800 times; they seemed to be on every other week there!
But Can were on one time and it was great. It was in 1975 and I was 16. I had no idea who they were at all, but looking back, they were everything that you’d imagine them to be.
I’m sure that I saw them with The Cure’s original bassist Michael Dempsey – and it was the start of permission for things. We’d see all these really highly-polished bands who were so far away from what I thought I could ever do.
Jaki Liebezeit’s drumming was incredible and he said that you have to “play monotonous” – I got it
The Cure had just started playing but when we saw Can, I thought they did what we did in our rehearsals; they sort of jiggled around for a while until someone found something and took hold of it and the rest went, “Okay! Great!”
Can were more sophisticated, obviously, but it wasn’t that far away from our own experience and that was definitely the link. Jaki Liebezeit’s drumming was incredible and he said that you have to “play monotonous.” I got it; I’d be listening to a 10-minute track and he’s playing the same thing – but he’s inside of it, and that was the connection for me!
